Touch the fire
by nipponophile
Summary: Donna finds out what it's like to reach out, really reach out, and touch somebody.


_Disclaimer: Why the BBC, the owners of the Doctor and Donna, didn't hold RTD and JG down and force them to film scenes like this, I'll never understand._

**Touch the fire**

Donna knew that they were being dragged into the heart of the revived Dalek empire, that an apocalypse was bearing down on them, and that things were really, really bad.

Yet she found herself struggling to give their impending doom the full weight of her attention because, well, she was entirely (and just a little guiltily) _distracted _by her rather heightened state of arousal, which was causing her to look across at the Doctor every other second and flash him her most subtle come hither look in an attempt to lure him into her arms and snog the living daylights out of him.

He was an all-too-willing participant, and the TARDIS, picking up on what she was sure must be an obscene amount of pheromones, was doing her utmost to help, creating darkened little nooks and alcoves where, hidden from prying eyes they were able to ravage each other for a few minutes before catching their breath, composing themselves and going back to eye-flirting across the console room. Or, if there was no convenient corner and they just couldn't wait, the TARDIS – _bless_– somehow picked up on that, too, and would engineer a fortuitous wobble, throwing them into each others' arms where they could cop a good old feel without arousing suspicion.

And every time they came together like this, there were the words, those beautiful, precious promises that they whispered to each other: _I love you I love you I love you_. Donna knew she would never ever tire of hearing those words drop from her Doctor's lips, as sweet and pure and sustaining as honey.

When the TARDIS finally stopped, and the Doctor told her – once again – that she was brilliant, she couldn't help but give him her biggest warmest smile. Yet, even in the midst of basking in such heady emotion, she suddenly started to hear _it _again, that heartbeat that had made itself known way back on the Shadow Proclamation. It chose this moment to remind her of its presence, more insistently now, as if trying to tell her that something huge and critical was imminent.

Beating loudly in her ears, it distracted even from the Doctor's calling to her, and she registered only faintly the fact that they others were already on their way out the door. Instead, she stood transfixed by the jar with the Doctor's hand; somehow the heartbeats seemed to be coming from there

The Doctor's voice finally snapped her out of her trance and she moved to join him.

Only to have the door slam shut, sealing her inside.

Away from him.

_No._

"Doctor! What have you done?"

_Surely he's not leaving me here by myself! _

"It wasn't me! I didn't do anything!" She could hear the fear in his voice.

"Oi! Oi, I'm not staying behind!"

_Don't you dare abandon me! You're supposed to be by my side, remember? Together no matter what. Why isn't the door opening?_

"Doctor!" The fear was palpable now, growing stronger every second they remained apart

She could hear him talking heatedly with the Daleks, demanding her release. But the door still stayed firmly shut.

And then, suddenly, she felt the TARDIS fall, and she grabbed onto the railing to stop herself from smashing against the wall.

_This can't be happening. _

She squeezed her eyes shut, thinking it must be some bad dream, but she could still feel the TARDIS tumbling, careening, taking her further and further away from the Doctor.

When she finally felt their descent stop, she let go of the railing, and fell to the floor, trying to avoid the smoke that now filled the console room. Alone and terrified, with fire burning hot and stifling all around her, she was taken aback to realise it was not death she feared most, but never seeing him again.

The heartbeats in her ear were unbearably loud now and, distraught at not being able to hold the one she loved one last time, she reached out to the only part of him she could. It seemed to be calling out to her as if it _knew _her.

When she touched the jar, the sudden surge of energy knocked her backward and made her gasp, and for a moment it seemed as if the whole light of the universe was inside her head, illuminating, revealing, metamorphosing into something new and huge and unimaginable.

The hand, lying on the floor amidst broken glass, glowed and pulsed and grew into…

_Oh. My. God._

It was _him._

The Doctor.

_My Doctor.__  
><em>  
>"It's you"<p>

"Oh yes!"

_He's starkers._

She averted her eyes out of habit and decorum, though the newly-awakened part of her _longed _to just gaze at him, to drink in and appreciate his form.

"You're naked!"

"Oh yes".

* * *

><p>Donna had never been thrown for quite as big a loop as this one. She had just watched the Doctor – or at least someone who looked, moved, and even <em>babbled<em> like him – grow…or was it regenerate? ….out of his lopped-off hand like some kind of weirdo-psycho alien worm, confront her unashamedly with his not-at-all-unattractive nakedness and without so much as a light pink blush, clothe himself in one of the Doctor's – _or one of his own_ – blue pinstriped suits and then keep on being Doctor-y as if nothing untoward or out of the ordinary or _completely barmy _had happened at all.

When she told him she thought he was stark raving bonkers, and that this must be some clever Time-Lord trick to copy yourself whenever it seemed convenient, he confused her by telling her that, no, he was utterly unique, and, even more incredulously, that he had grown out of _her_.

So what did that make him, then? Was he still the Doctor? Not the Doctor? A Doctor clone? Some kind of half-Doctor? Or the Doctor's slightly more manic twin?

Perhaps it was (f) none of the above.

Because when he spoke next, the voice was a lot closer to home.

Bit like hers, actually.

And he didn't mind telling here he wasn't too thrilled about it.

"Oi! Watch it, Spaceman!"

"Oi! Watch it, Earthgirl!"

_Blimey_.

They were like two sides of the same coin, intergalactic yin and yang. It was doing her head in.

Even as he looked upon her with exactly the same face as her beloved, she could still – _just_– believe it when he told her he only had one heart, and that he was some sort of timey-wimey Time Lord-human meta-crisis, whatever the hell that meant.

But when he told her that all of it, all of this had converged on her because she was _special_, well, it was then that he went too far.

She could almost hear the sound of the bounds of credibility snapping.

"I keep telling you, I'm not!"

_Why do I have to keep telling _everybody_ that these days?_

He jumped on her denial almost quicker than she could spit it out.

And, despite all the weirdness and _I don't understand_, when he spoke again, one thing became evidently clear - that inside this man whose gentle brown eyes regarded her with such familiar tenderness, were the same memories, knowledge, experiences, and emotions that made the Doctor who he was.

For this Doctor's words reached right into the very depths of her hurt and her pain as only those of someone who knew her, _really _knew her, could.

There was no hiding behind bluster or bravado - or even a bit of biff - this time. At this moment, it was like she stood before him completely transparent – _she was the naked one this time_- as he told her he knew what she was thinking, that the Donna everyone saw was just a way to get people to listen, because, deep down, she didn't think she was worth it.

It devastated her like nothing else could have.

_Because he's right._

She begged him to stop. Twice.

To no avail.

He just kept going on his own little tangent, before pausing, fixing has gaze on her and giving her one of his trademark, high-beam smiles.

"But look at what you did!"

She did look at him then….and was astonished to see pride shining in his eyes. After knowing everything, all her hows and whats and whys, who she really was deep, deep down… _here_ was where he had ended up. Accepting her. Loving her. _Praising _her.

She started to feel overwhelmed again.

But the Doctor, in his inimitable fashion, barrelled on, telling her that they had _always_ been heading for this, that the very forces of creation had been drawing them together for the longest time.

Donna had never believed in destiny, seeing life as something altogether more random and tenuous.

_But I want to._

Because the sheer exuberance of this new Doctor's conviction resonated in her soul with an unworldly surety and truth, so much that she found herself yearning to join him in this place of unshakeable belief, for it to become her foundation of hope as much as it so obviously was his.

So she took a deep breath and decided to believe.

In herself, in them and in a brighter future.

* * *

><p>Donna was enjoying watching the new Doctor as he went about constructing some kind of neutron-bio-upside-down-catalysing thingy with relentless enthusiasm and fearsome focus.<p>

She didn't pretend she understood even a little of how it worked. The most important thing was that she wasn't alone and he wasn't alone, they were in this together and somehow that seemed to make her feel safer, powerful, as if even if it were just the two of them against the whole Dalek Empire, they would still have a chance.

And she knew that he felt the same way.

* * *

><p>When she burst out of the TARDIS, prepared to pick up and continue the fight after the new Doctor had been felled, she didn't see <em>him <em>at first, didn't notice that his eyes had fixed on her immediately as if they alone could somehow protect her. But she did feel her freshly-discovered confidence falter as she held the new Doctor's device, wanting desperately to help, yet with no clue how. And she heard the Doctor scream out her name as the energy bolt hit her and she, too, fell.

No-one was looking her way when she came to and emerged from behind the screen where the force of the bolt had pushed her. Instead, they all seemed paralysed with despair, eyes transfixed by the countdown screen that, any second now, would signal the end of reality itself.

She smiled as she moved towards the Dalek control bank.

_Not on my watch, matey._

And with a brazen sureness that frankly surprised her she was off, flicking switches, and pressing buttons, laying waste to all of Davros' meticulously-constructed plans with a cheeky smile and a flick of her red hair, the wise-cracks flowing as quickly and easily as her technological explanations of exactly what it was she was doing to a delightfully gob-smacked Doctor and his equally entranced double.

She had to admit that she was loving the way the Doctor couldn't tear his eyes away from her, completely enamored with her newly-found capability to make everything move at her command. He looked at her as if she was the most unimaginably amazing, incredible, captivating thing he had ever laid eyes on and that he was the luckiest man in the universe because he was _hers_.

She couldn't quite believe it herself. How far she had come. How far they had both come. Together. And now, here she was, the Doctor-Donna, just as the Ood had foretold way all the back when her and the Doctor were still new to each other and _Oh, no, no, no, no, we're not married, we're so not married, never, never ever. _

She could feel the energy and awareness surging through her, opening up parts of her mind long dormant, releasing the waiting potential she never knew she had. The realities. The possibilities. What they could do, right now, tomorrow, throughout eternity.

The new Doctor's excitement crackled and sparked, and together with the Doctor's more restrained but quietly fervent joy at this turn of events, the three of them moved and worked with unity of purpose, power and expectation.

They sent all but one of the 27 stolen planets back home, Donna, the new Doctor by her side, rejoicing that they had saved the day and were still all together, no-one lost. Dalek Caan's prophecy of death seemed as misguided and superseded as Davros' shattered ambition, and though she couldn't completely forget, she quickly dismissed it to somewhere remote, where it couldn't intrude.

She had better things to focus her mind on anyway.

Like, before this day was through, she would have the Doctor all to herself. Just the two of them, truly and wholly each other's, for the first time. For the rest of time.

She could hardly wait.


End file.
